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Writing in Hiragana

  Tags: Hiragana | Writing | Japanese
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
cameroncrc
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 Message 1 of 4
24 June 2009 at 2:28am | IP Logged 
When you are writing only in hiragana, is the topic marker written は as usual or does it change to わ to differentiate between the two?
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Bao
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 Message 2 of 4
24 June 2009 at 2:46am | IP Logged 
Yes. No. I don't write only in hiragana. But yes, it stays は (why shouldn't it?), at least it did so in the children's picture books I read. (...yes. well. our library had some.)
As kanji usually structure a text written in Japanese, when written mostly in hiragana there often are spaces added where one would naturally pause in speech, eg after particles.
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ILuvEire
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 Message 3 of 4
24 June 2009 at 5:30am | IP Logged 
Yes, は and へ are never written わ or え.
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minus273
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 Message 4 of 4
24 June 2009 at 10:58pm | IP Logged 
ILuvEire wrote:
Yes, は and へ are never written わ or え.

Some irrelevant information for your amusement.
<trivia>
The standardization of colloquial Japanese found its first use in the National Language Education in Taiwan, a newly-acquired territory planned to be a "model colony". Down there, the phoneticism camp won the orthography battle, so in the textbooks for Taiwanese children, は was written ワ. (the books were katakana-only to ease lecture, it seems to me)

Too lazy to find examples, but some are floating on the net, I swear.

In Japan mainland, particle "wa" was written は, but don't you rejoice. "Kawa" (river) was written かは, as the ancients pronounced it "kafa". (maybe earlier kapa, which explains why p-row is written with h-row + circle. The p lenited to a bilabial f, and voiced to w when medial, and delabialized to h when initial) If my memory doesn't deceive me, at the same time when Taiwanese children were enjoying the colloquial language and phonetic orthography, Japanese children-books still used the classical grammar.
</trivia>


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